Achieving Breakthrough Service
Leveraging Employee and Customer Satisfaction for Profit and Growth
Growing competition, increasing globalization, and rising consumer expectations have intensified the demand for organizations to provide exceptional service and enhance customer value on a continual basis. In response, many leading companies are abandoning traditional and less effective customer-service management models. Instead, they are adopting a groundbreaking model developed by Harvard Business School (HBS) faculty for achieving a greater loyal customer base, improved profitability, and accelerated organizational growth. Focused on the interdependent relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, this value profit chain model provides the strategy, tools, and concepts required for your organization to deliver breakthrough service.
What You Can Expect
Through leveraging the HBS breakthrough service model, this executive education program examines the impact that employee loyalty, satisfaction, and commitment have on customer behavior, loyalty, and commitment—and ultimately on the organization's profits and growth. Upon completing this intensive learning experience, you will return to your organization with a comprehensive blueprint for increasing employee and customer satisfaction by fostering loyalty, improving profitability, and accelerating business growth.
Your Course of Study
Immersed in a series of thought-provoking lectures, interactive case studies, and hands-on business simulations, you will explore the strategic steps required to achieve service breakthroughs and deliver differentiated products and services.
Who Is Right for the Program
Specifically designed for senior managers in service, retail, and manufacturing firms, this business strategy program will be highly beneficial for individuals who have the authority to make decisions and initiate change across the organization. To encourage organization-wide impact, admission preference is given to senior management teams composed of four to eight individuals.
| Fee: | $10,500 |
The program fee covers tuition, books, case materials, accommodations, and most meals.
Programs, dates, fees, and faculty are subject to change.
In accordance with Harvard University policy, Harvard Business School does not discriminate against any person on the basis of race, color, sex or sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, national or ethnic origin, political beliefs, veteran status, or disability in admission to, access to, treatment in, or employment in its programs and activities.
What You Can Expect
Achieving Breakthrough Service will transform the way you think about customer service. Led by the creators of the "value profit chain" model, this program focuses on practical strategies for delivering breakthrough service to your customers, employees, and shareholders. From increasing loyalty and enhancing your cross-selling and up-selling efforts to leveraging referrals and measuring performance, you will gain the tools and skills required to boost employee and customer satisfaction levels—and, in turn, increase profits and growth. As a result, you will return to your organization better prepared to:
- Enhance loyalty through targeted customer retention efforts
- Increase business through the sale of related products or services to existing customers
- Develop a process for cultivating referrals from satisfied customers
- Utilize customer insights and data to enhance research and development efforts
- Measure the value of human capital investments
- Leverage technology to better support front-line workers
- Improve hiring and training initiatives throughout the organization
- Effectively link employee rewards to employee performance enterprise wide
How Will My Organization Benefit?
Executive Education programs at Harvard Business School are a significant investment for both you and your organization. Going far beyond the basic transmission of skills and theories, each program provides applicable lessons in the classroom that can be implemented successfully within your organization. You will acquire a fresh perspective on global business from our groundbreaking curriculum, world-renowned faculty, and an accomplished group of elite peers from around the world.
"ABS gave me the confidence not to compromise on truths, which will provide me the competitive edge I was looking for. Business is about creating and keeping loyal customers—and the best loyalty program comes from delivering value to customers as a result of their last interaction with you. The program has changed me as an individual, and will certainly benefit my colleagues and the firm as a whole."
Pratap Nambiar [Regional Executive Partner, Global Markets], KPMG Asia Pacific Limited, Singapore
Your Course of Study
Carefully structured by HBS faculty members, the program's comprehensive curriculum addresses the critical areas that contribute to achieving breakthrough service. By examining timely research, real-world case studies, and actionable ideas, you will gain greater insight into the strategic service vision, the economics of customer relationships, and the link between customer satisfaction and customer behavior. You will acquire the tools to leverage information technology and process reengineering for competitive advantage, while exploring the role of leadership in change management.
Throughout the program, you will study a variety of organizations that have successfully implemented the value profit chain to deliver differentiated products and services at the lowest possible costs. Topics will include how best to:
- Align the "performance trinity" components—management and leadership, culture and values, and strategy and vision
- Enhance the value equation for employees, customers, partners, and investors
- Identify and revisit the shared values at the heart of the organization's culture
- Develop a value-centered method for measuring and recognizing performance
- Hardwire the organization to achieve desired results
- Improve learning and innovation efforts through effective knowledge transfer
- Understand the importance of treating employees like customers, and customers like employees
- Achieve superior franchises that bolster the organization's reputation as a preferred employer, seller, buyer, neighbor, or investment option
- Assess the lifetime value of unique customer segments such as antagonists, hostages, mercenaries, loyalists, and apostles within the organization's portfolio of customersv
- Explore relationships with employees and customers that begin with satisfaction and lead to loyalty, commitment, apostle-like behavior, and ownership
Optional Application Session
To address your own company-specific challenges, you may opt to participate in an optional coaching session at the close of the program. Led by HBS faculty members, this session enables you to redefine your service vision as you begin applying the value profit chain model to maximize new opportunities within your organization.
Action-Learning Takeaway
As a participant, you will receive a copy of the Achieving Breakthrough Value CD-ROM Series. This action-oriented toolkit was developed by HBS faculty and helps senior executives understand how to drive greater profitability by focusing on employee satisfaction and loyalty, which ultimately leads to increased customer loyalty and shareholder value. The series is composed of four modules—Understanding the Value Profit Chain, Launching Transformation Using Value Profit Chain Principles, Putting the Value Profit Chain to Work, and Sustaining the Gains. Each module is presented on a separate CD containing classroom videos, case studies, animated frameworks, slides, and workbook exercises to reinforce individual learning. Using best-practice examples from well-known organizations, each CD brings key concepts to life.
"After years of traditional training, this was the best learning method I have ever experienced. The professors were passionate, the sessions were captivating, and the peer-group discussions were powerful. Through the case studies and lectures, I could see the direct link between service excellence and profit growth. My company sent a group of managers to share the same state-of-the-art concepts and tools, so implementing changes was much easier when we returned."
FranÇois Chevillotte [Director of Customer Experience], Computacenter France, France
Who Is Right for the Program
Achieving Breakthrough Service is intended for a select group of senior managers in service, retail, and manufacturing firms who have decision-making authority. To enhance learning through exposure to vastly different perspectives and experiences, HBS employs a thoughtful admissions process that ensures the selection of highly qualified participants who represent diverse companies, industries, and countries.
Visit the admissions section for details about our application process.
Past Participants Represented:
| Industries | Nationalities | ||||
| 2% | Chem/Pharm/Bio | 6% | Africa | ||
| 2% | Communications | 2% | Asia | ||
| 3% | Consumer Products | 4% | Australia/NZ | ||
| 12% | Financial | 28% | Europe | ||
| 4% | High Technology | 4% | Latin America | ||
| 4% | Manufacturing | 3% | Middle East | ||
| 10% | Nonprofit | 35% | North America | ||
| 7% | Other | 18% | Other | ||
| 14% | Other Services | ||||
| 20% | Professional Services | ||||
| 1% | Raw Materials/Energy | ||||
| 6% | Real Estate/Construction | ||||
| 7% | Retail Services | ||||
| 8% | Utilities/Telecommunications | ||||
Participating Companies Have Included:
Affinia Hotels and Denihan |
Google, Inc. |
Meet the Program Faculty
Like all Harvard Business School Executive Education programs, Achieving Breakthrough Service is developed and taught by a core faculty of HBS professors. Our faculty members are widely recognized as skilled educators, groundbreaking researchers, and award-winning authors.
Through publishing, consulting, and teaching, they leverage their business expertise and field-based research to create new knowledge and enduring concepts that shape the practice of management. The result is a teaching team that exposes participants to multiple perspectives, challenging their thinking and encouraging new practices that result in superior business leadership. For more detailed biographies, click on each faculty name.
Frances X. Frei, Associate Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Technology and Operations Management Unit.
James L. Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor, Emeritus.
Luis M. Huete, Professor of Production, Technology and Operations Management, IESE Business School, University of Navarra.
Das Narayandas, James J. Hill Professor of Business Administration. Member of the Marketing Unit; and faculty cochair of the "Program for Leadership Development."
W. Earl Sasser, Baker Foundation Professor. Member of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit; faculty chair of "Achieving Breakthrough Service" and "Leadership Best Practices," and faculty cochair of the "Program for Leadership Development."
"The faculty provided an intellectual view of business service models in varying degrees of execution that was easy for me to assimilate with my leadership style. As I engaged with other senior executives on common challenges, I learned from their varied experience as well. Since returning, I have applied all my learning and have simply underscored the direction in which I am leading my organization."
Bridget Moscatello [Vice President, Customer Operations], Empire Today, U.S.